


(To See) a Heaven in a Wild Flower

by sprx77



Category: Bleach, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bleach Fusion, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Author will absolutely NOT stick to one tense, BAMF Midoriya Izuku, Changing Tenses, Even if it's not yet because spoilers, God I really shouldn't be posting this until I have a lot more written, Implied/Referenced Suicide, It WILL be everybody lives/nobody dies, Midoriya Izuku Has a Quirk, Midoriya Izuku is Shiba Kaien, Not Canon Compliant - Bleach Chapter 686 - Death & Strawberry, Reincarnation, Temporary Character Death, The temporary character death tag is for soul reaper things, This fic WILL have a happy ending, Zanpakutou
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:01:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23272159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprx77/pseuds/sprx77
Summary: Midoriya Izuku is a boring quirkless teenager right up until he's fourteen years old. In one universe, he meets his hero All Might and accepts the weight of the world onto his shoulders. In this universe, watching the sunset accidentally turns into that swandive Kacchan suggested, and his soul goes tumbling out of his body.Shiba Kaien didn't expect to wake up again. That's now how the Cycle of Reincarnationworks.But as centuries of memory make a home in Izuku's head, and this brave new world proves to be the same one it's always been, Izuku knows one thing and one thing only:With this power, he can become a hero!If he doesn't get eaten by Hollows, first.
Comments: 146
Kudos: 842
Collections: Creative Chaos Discord Recs, Identity Crisis, Reincarnation and Transmigration, Works Worth Rereading





	1. Prologue

Here’s what a lot of timelines have in common: a rickety safety railing, in a rarely used location. If the administration is aware of it, which is doubtful, they’ve made a note to repair it that keeps getting pushed to the bottom of the priority list.

None of the children of this school use the rooftop access or go near the railing.

Here are some things a few timelines have in common: sometimes Midoriya Izuku, on the fateful day Bakugou Katsuki tells him to take a swandive off the building, goes up to the roof. This day is a nexus point of possibilities; it’s the day he impresses All Might or he doesn’t.

(He almost, always, does).

In most timelines he spends the hour after school trying to salvage his hero notebook.

In some timelines he goes to the roof.

In _most_ timelines he doesn’t plan on jumping. It’s out of morbid curiosity that he climbs the steps, but not _that_ morbid. He thinks “Is the roof jump even high enough to kill someone? The building isn’t that tall. If it _is_ high enough, then Kacchan could face an accessory-to-murder charge by encouraging someone to kill themselves… If they followed through.”

But even then he knew that Kacchan wasn’t suggesting anyone _else_ was worthless enough that they’d be better off dead.

“Some hero,” Izuku would say to himself, and immediately feel guilty. Then he’d get distracted; the sunset from on high was _gorgeous_. It was majestic in a hard-to-describe way, making him feel small but not like Kacchan did; everyone who’d ever existed had seen this same sunset, for as far back as humanity existed, far back beyond _quirks_.

In most timelines he is emboldened by the feeling rising bright in his chest, a sweet violin score that sounds like _you can be a hero you can be anything_ , and yet—

In _some_ —

He leans a little, entirely excited with a small toothy smile and the sun dying his freckles orange and—

The railing crashes out from under him and the proposed swandive becomes a panicked free fall, desperation scrabbling at his ribs from the inside.

In some timelines he goes home, is ambushed, is saved, ambushes, is destroyed, is put to the test and _saves_ , is lifted up beyond his wildest dreams.

In the timelines where he falls off the roof, things go one of two ways.

If he bothered to fish the hero notebook out of the koi pond, Kacchan leaves the schoolgrounds none the wiser.

If he left it there, figuring that it’s better to start from scratch and that seeing the destruction would only hurt him, then Bakugou Katsuki gets a bad feeling. A horrible inkling. He bows off from his cronies and looks around the school for long minutes, at first casually, and then with mounting frantic worry.

He turns around a corner, running, and comes to a sudden horrible stop.

He has just enough time to register what he’s seeing—a falling, panicking body, limbs clawing desperately for purchase and a panicked expression on a familiar face—before it thumps to a stop.

A horrific, final thud.

Although the reaction from one would-be hero is always the same, from this point the timeline can go one of two ways:

Either Midoriya Izuku has a quirk all along, a very specific quirk that needed just this type of scenario to activate—

Or he doesn’t.


	2. Remembrance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That in mind, Izuku shoves everything he’s worried about into a little box labeled “FUCK” to deal with later. Right now he wants to be back in his body, is fairly disturbed to be outside of it.

He expects it to hurt.

Amidst the two seconds of panic, the awful realization that doesn’t really have time to sink in, he has the half-notion that he should brace for a godawful pain and the even louder panic drowning it out that there’s no possible way he could _anticipate_ that kind of—

There’s less a thump—sickening, crunching, he imagines it and _imagines_ it—and more a _bounce_ , and for a moment it’s all he can think about: unconscious people surviving plane crashes, drunks being picked up in tornadoes and sustaining little-to-no injuries.

Hope rises in his breast like a fluttery thing, chasing the dregs of adrenaline and leaving him light-headed with something that wants to become tears.

He feels shaky, light, and for some reason his _head_ hurts.

Oh, god, did he hit it?

No, no—no matter how limp he was, landing on his head from the height would have killed him. Or at least knocked him out.

And he’s awake now.

Awake, and he probably shouldn’t move—certainly not move his neck, at least—but that ship has… sailed? He’s sitting up, one hand on the back of his neck in something like wonder.

He’s looking around, eyes dazed, unable to process the fact that he’s fine. Somehow completely uninjured.

The _chances_ of that—

His eyes catch on the one thing that doesn’t belong.

“Kacchan?” Izuku asks, and there’s something—off—about his voice.

He takes in Kacchan’s expression and recoils.

It’s—he—

He _never_ wants to see that expression on someone else’s face ever again, let alone someone he knows so well, let alone someone as strong and confident as _Kacchan_!

But the expression doesn’t fade, even though Izuku’s alright. The expression stays right where it is, a stricken kind of horror—Kacchan is on his knees, absently, his hands are shaking—

He looks like someone _died_.

The sinking sensation is back in his guts, goosebumps rising on his arms. Why? What does his body know that he doesn’t?

The human animal is a complicated thing, possessed of a hundred senses that don’t provide clear analysis to the brain; right now something is saying _danger_ and _oh fuck_ and there’s a grief rising in his throat like floodwater, but—

Why?

A shudder steals down his spine as he realizes that Kacchan’s not looking at him. As he realizes, quite belatedly, that Kacchan’s eyes are fixed on something—

And he’s still making that _expression_ , like he’s seen a ghost—like he’s seen his _mother’s_ ghost—

Izuku feels something touch his palm.

And that, too, is odd—part of his brain notes, absently—because a moment ago he’d been wearing his school uniform but now he’s not, and instead of bright red sneakers he’s wearing some kind of open-healed sandal, palms and backside and those very heals holding him up in a kind of relaxed sprawl where he landed after he bounced.

Izuku tears his eyes off Kacchan’s face, even as tears start making their way down his pinched face, as his breathing comes faster in the first stages of hyperventilating—

He lifts his hand to see what’s under it and screams to find it’s blood.

Like a horror movie he follows the seeping trail to his own red shoes, somehow off his feet—did they fall off?—and up a school uniform—

Did someone fall _with him_? Izuku is horrified, he’d thought he was alone on the roof, but what if someone had rushed out to save him, what if someone had come through the roof access stairwell right as he fell and got tangled—

Up—

It’s his face.

Kacchan makes a strangled sobbing noise and blood drips off Izuku’s palm, the drops much to quiet to hear, and bile sloshes in his gut, and.

Izuku climbs to his feet as fast as he can, not knowing anything besides that he _cannot_ let more blood touch him, it isn’t in him, he can’t take his eyes away from his own face, somehow right there, his own akimbo limbs and—

He settles Nejibana with one hand, so that it doesn’t get caught in his Shihakusho as he stands.

Wait, what?

Izuku looks down at himself for the first time, part of him well aware that his brain is grappling for distraction—any distraction—

He’s wearing a, yes, Shihakusho, and how does he know that? Of course, he’s always known that. It’s been his uniform ever since—

And _yup_ , there’s his headache again, a light throbbing at his temples, and he brings up a hand alight with glowing green kaido before he even registers the decision.

Izuku stops.

He blinks.

“Yeah, okay.” He says, in a voice that doesn’t register as his own except for how it does.

Basic kaido doesn’t have any incantation, but then again basic kaido is basically a reiryoku transfusion with a strong encouragement for the body to heal itself. Unless you are very, very good, and have a series of spells in mind to fix the issues _and_ then plan on doing a reiryoku transfer (what’s the point of the healing if they die of spirit bleed?), it’s nine point nine out of ten times the superior option.

It’s easy to teach, less finicky than proper healing spells, and after a while the very specific versions fell away from common or even specialized knowledge.

But the Shiba have always been the Kido Keepers of the Soul King, the one of the five great noble families entrusted with the full archives of demon magic.

“The song of the wind by a stream,” He begins, voice rising with every word.

_A shy lily half hiding itself in the grasses_

_Night of clouds and stars and wine and passion_

_Palace of tessellated restraint and splendor_

_Chants within a temple sweeping outward_

_To morning_

_By this gay lady, harmonize!_ Kaido Number 64: Diener!”

Lavender light shoots from his palm, the consistency of early morning fog. It wraps around the—his—body, trailing over limbs and in its slow and peaceful wake…

The neck unbreaks, the arms straighten, the meat heals over with unblemished flesh, and the blood—purified—sucks back into the veins.

Izuku breathes out all his tension.

Now his body could just be sleeping.

Well. In some ways it’s just a gigai, isn’t it? The kind they used before little Kisuke invented the artificial ones.

That in mind, Izuku shoves everything he’s worried about into a little box labeled “FUCK” to deal with later. Right now he wants to be back in his body, is fairly disturbed to be _outside_ of it.

In fact he’s so relieved to lay down over his still form that he doesn’t even register what a monumentally bad idea it is, until his soul is fully seated and the cocktail of panic-pain-adrenaline and the literal medical _shock_ of healing hits him all at once.

It’s like being on the King of Hell’s own roller coaster. He’s instantly delirious, brain a hot mess, and it’s this lightheaded unwell state that has him, in a moment of remembrance, trying to reassure his onlooker.

“Dn’ worry, Kacchan!” He giggles, and then completely out of context, but perhaps out of some lingering need to explain the magical recovery: “Th’nk I got a quirr’ after all!”

He doesn’t see Kacchan’s face before everything gets black and heavy.


	3. The other shoe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wakes up in the Fourth.
> 
> No, that’s wrong.
> 
> He wakes up in a hospital.

He wakes up in the Fourth.

No, that’s wrong.

He wakes up in a hospital.

His mother is there, holding onto his hand with both of hers. She’s been crying. There’s a beeping, somewhere, and he’s got an IV.

He struggles to raise a hand to comfort her, mouth as dry as if he’s gone out drinking with Lisa, the loud nights that faded into afternoon sunshine once they’d passed out, tired from casting kido into the starry sky from a picnic blanket on the Shiba estates, Kyōraku’s sake spilling like water.

The memory _hurts_ and it shouldn’t, except for of course how it absolutely does, because Lisa—

He’s Midoriya Izuku and he takes a deep shuddery breath, pushing everything _else_ into that FUCK shoebox to be unraveled later.

His dramatics have roused his mother, though, and he can’t quite tell if she was sleeping or just out of it.

“Oh, Izuku, honey!” She says, and then to his horror breaks into fresh tears.

He looks around for something he can do—anything—and spots a nurse call button that he presses without remorse.

A nurse comes in, his demeanor neutral-to-pleasant in the way of trained medical professionals. He’s not in a Shihakusho.

Izuku shakes himself.

“Hello,” He says, patting his mother’s hair carefully. “I’m awake. Is there a doctor waiting to see me?”

She wipes her eyes frantically and turns to the nurse with an expression Izuku can’t see from his angle.

“Oh, yes. He’s on his way. But in the meantime, sweetheart, how are you feeling?”

Izuku opens his mouth to respond, realizes he doesn’t know, and pauses to take stock of his mortal body. He feels exhausted, of course. He’d—or rather this form’d—died. But the body being in technical working order, as well as the addition of a living soul, had kick-started it properly.

Unfortunately, the fall had taken its toll, in terms of chemicals and system strain if nothing else. Nothing is broken, though, and it’s nothing a good few days of sleep won’t fix. He doubts he even has a bruise.

The nurse checks his IV while he flexes his fingers and toes.

“I’m good, I think.” He responds cheerfully, already casting his mind to the long list of things he has to do _after_. And how’s he going to get out of this body again? He needs to figure out the situation in the Land of the Living and there’s no way to do that from the ground.

And he’ll need Nejibana, of course, to say nothing of human eyes that would otherwise be able to see him work.

Wait.

“Kacchan!” Izuku says, suddenly sitting up. “Oh my gosh, is Kacchan alright? He looked so awful, mom!”

His mother’s face did something weird, twisting in a way he didn’t know. Her eyes moved over the room before he jaw set, and then softened.

“There’s actually some things we have to talk to you about once you feel better, Izuku.” She ends up saying, gently.

“Well, I’m not really hurt—” He says, and his mom makes a noise of protest. Right, of course, he’s in a hospital bed. He must have scared her so much. He reaches out a hand and she takes it like a lifeline.

“So do you feel up for a few questions about what happened, champ?” The nurse asks, and Izuku tilts his head in puzzlement.

“Of course,” He agrees. “I’m awake so we might as well.”

He smiles at him, and the nurse smiles back, but there’s something strange about it. He has the oddest feeling he’s missing something.

The nurse leaves and a few moments later someone in scrubs and a labcoat comes in, followed by a man in a tan trench coat. The man could not look more like a police detective if he _tried_ , no matter the soft smile etched into his face, and it’s good that Izuku knows all this because last time Kaien came down to the Living World, they were starting to disarm peasants under the Hideyoshi regime.

“Hello, Izuku. I’m Doctor Nagoya.” They say. “Do you feel up to answering some questions?”

He nodded.

“Alright, but if you need a minute, or if you’re feeling overwhelmed, just let us know and we can take a break. How’s that sound?”

“Alright?” He tried to keep the question out of his voice. They were treating him like a much younger child. It was probably his baby face.

“Is it okay if your mom stays here for our questions?” His mother’s hand tightened in his and he nodded once more.

“Okay.” They shuffled around, balancing a clipboard on their lap. The detective, apparently not intending to introduce himself, sat in chair closest to the door.

“So, first of all, how are you feeling?” This was beginning to get a bit repetitive but Izuku worked to keep any frustration off his face. They were just doing their jobs.

“Pretty good, all things considered. I’m not a doctor but I think I’m just a little sore.”

“Alright.” They checked something on the clipboard. “And mentally?”

“Mentally?” Izuku asked. “Oh, right. I probably hit my head. No, I think I remember everything. I don’t have a headache or anything. I’m not experiencing any sudden mood swings.”

He smiled at them, though the doctor looked a little surprised. They smiled, encouraging.

“Do you still feed bad, or stressed, or overwhelmed?” They pressed.

“No, not particularly. Wait ‘still?’” Izuku glanced toward his mother. “I haven’t been really stressed out lately, or anything, so that shouldn’t really be a factor in my health assessment.”

His mother’s smile wobbles.

“Midoriya-san,” Says the doctor, looking sympathetic but not hesitant. “When people your age try to hurt themselves like you did, there’s usually some kind of stressor in play. In my experience, either you’ve been struggling with these kind of feelings for a while or something really hard happened to push you here.”

Izuku blinked. _Try to hurt themselves, like you did_. He abruptly reframes the conversation with the knowledge that he’s been admitted for _a suicide attempt._

Instinct has him wanting to blurt out that he _didn’t_ , honestly, you have to believe him, but there’s another set of memories at home in his head and Kaien’s hand calms the sudden stream of anxiety, stepping forward with an adult’s assurance.

Panic wouldn’t help him here.

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” he says, as clearly as possible. “I was on the roof watching the sunset, and the guardrail broke. I couldn’t—there wasn’t anything to grab onto. I was really scared.”

The doctor exchanges a look with the detective, who nods.

All at once a great deal of tension leaves their shoulders.

“That’s so good to hear, Midoriya-san.” They check more boxes on the clipboard, scrawling something quick under one section. “So you didn’t go up to the roof planning to jump?”

“No,” Izuku says truthfully. “I didn’t want to jump.”

Best keep it simple.

“And as of right now, you don’t want to hurt yourself?”

Izuku’s brow furrowed, and he relaxed it.

“No, not at all.”

He’d probably have to, in order to get out of this gigai, but _surely_ they’d used some other method back in the day? Kaien was lucky enough to be one of the officers who _didn’t_ have to go into a body for their work; it helped that his high levels of spiritual pressure would have degraded it quickly.

Hopefully _this_ body, being his and technically alive, wouldn’t go through that miserable process.

“Do you, at this time, have any plan to hurt yourself or anybody else?”

“No.” He struggled, feeling he should add more, but what was there to say?

“Have there been days when you felt particularly sad, or tired, or like you weren’t interested in things you normally like?”

“No, nothing like that.”

When Izuku was given to flights of depression, he shoved himself _into_ his goals; he’d go to the gym of their apartment building, follow heroes around, map out patrols, take notes on interviews and fights and strategies.

“That’s good, Izuku. That’s very good. But you know there’s nothing wrong with needing help, right? If you ever feel that way, you can come to your mother, or the police, or a hero or a doctor for help.”

“I know,” He says, and once more it’s the work of effort to keep the question out of his voice. And then, like the clouds opening up to a sunny day, he realizes.

He thinks, _Of course I know that, how could I ever want to be a hero, if I didn’t believe people are always there to help?_

It’s part of the foundation of what makes him _Izuku_ and he has always, always desperately wanted to somehow become a hero.

And abruptly, with the confidence of nearly six hundred years of life, he realizes he _can_. Of course he can. He can do anything he can set his mind to.

The sun bursts through the clouds like hope and clarity and he grins because he can’t keep the stupid smile off his face.

“I’m going to be a hero, you know?” He says, with all the surety of a man who kills monsters and protects the people under him, with all a young teenager’s enthusiasm.

“I—Izuku—” his mother says, voice tentative, and once that would have sent his castle of hope crashing down to the foundations. But Izuku _was_ a parent, more or less, to his younger siblings and he’s not going to let that sympathetic and sad and disappointed _for him_ voice from his nightmares touch on his future at all.

“It’s fine, mom.” He says, sharply but not unkindly. “You don’t have to worry.”

“Oh, Izuku baby, how could I _not_ worry?” She demands, new tears spilling. “Baby you’re—you’re—”

His mind is _spinning_ with every resentful thought he’s ever had, all the spite and hope and resourcefulness channeling into ambition, and his mouth finally opens to spill out:

 _“Being quirkless doesn’t mean you can’t be a hero_.” It’s been sitting on his tongue ever since he was four years old, waiting for him to have the confidence to back it up. “All I ever wanted was your support, mom. That’s all I wanted. That day, when I was—when you _apologized—_ you were—you were supposed to _support me_ , but you just—you gave up. And you assumed I would give up. And every moment since then, when I worked toward my dream, I did it _alone_.”

“Honey,” Midoriya Inko blinks, surprised by the fit, by the tears in her son’s own eyes. “Honey, I—you. You still think you can be a hero?”

“I never stopped thinking that.” He whispers, throat hurting, so _angry_ somewhere deep in his heart. He loves his mom, he does, but it’s so hard to _trust_ her. “There’s dozens of heroes with mental quirks—or analysis quirks—or quirks completely unsuited for heroism and they manage just find. I’m smarter than some people with analysis quirks, and I’m willing to work twice as hard, I’m more fit than most elemental heroes—it’s _enough_. I promise it’s enough. I just. I just need you to believe in me.”

Earlier today he’d been ridiculed for putting U.A. down as his high school of choice and he knew—he _knew_ —that if he told his mom he’d written it down she’d assume he meant General Studies and never think _twice_.

“Oh, honey—honey—of course I think you can do whatever you put your mind to. But—there’s never been a quirkless hero before and I don’t want you to be _unhappy_. What if you can’t?”

 _What if I_ can _?_ He thinks, with all the fire of phoenix, with the entire churning power of the sea behind him. His heart is beating so fast in his chest.

“But he’s not.”

All three heads swivel over to the police officer, or detective, or whatever he is.

Izuku’s neck warms a little as he realizes, in his newfound bravery, he’s more or less ignored the mental health doctor and the other man in the room.

“Your son—you, Mr. Midoriya—showed signs of a quirk today. It’s why we’re here. Well, that and the burgeoning criminal investigation into one Bakugou Katsuki, who by his own admission encouraged you kill yourself earlier today.”

The temperature of the room plummets. Hadn’t he been thinking that, earlier? That Kacchan would get in _so much trouble_ if Izuku had been really suicidal, if he’d said that to someone who really was struggling, hadn’t he thought _what a villainous thing to say, Kacchan!_

“So, Mr. Midoriya. Let’s start with the easy question. What can you tell us about your newfound quirk?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm literally posting these as I write them, which I KNOW is a bad idea, yet here we are. Expect a lull between chapters once my motivation runs out for the night. But I'm really excited to share this with the world.


	4. Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you want to press charges?"

_Fuck_.

“I—not much?” He offers, mind already racing for time. The only thing he’s sure of is that he absolutely cannot claim being a Shinigami.

And that means— _that_ means—that he’s got to pick _one_ aspect his abilities and present it going forward, and stick with it. He starts considering all the things a Shinigami can do, the Zankensoki and others, and then he runs smack dab into the problem of _can he use any of those abilities in a gigai?_

A Shinigami’s life is their weapon, and though he hasn’t _remembered_ long, he’s spent half a millennium with Nejibana and like hell he’s going to agree to work without her in any capacity.

But that didn’t explain the healing he’d done?

Ah, fuck.

And _that_ was even saying he could continue to live as Midoriya Izuku to begin with, though even approaching that can of worms made him leery. What the fuck was Soul Society doing that the Living World was literally inundated with super powers like this?

Where did quirks _come_ from?

Izuku touched his temple without really meaning to, dazed by the possibilities, and his mother’s eyes narrowed on the motion like a hawk.

“Izuku, honey, does your head hurt?” She fretted.

“Yes,” He admitted, and it wasn’t even a lie. He looked up at the detective, took a deep breath. “Okay, so—I don’t really know what to call my quirk.”

There, that was safe. “If you knew me, you’d understand how _weird_ it is that I don’t know everything there is to know about it, yesterday, but—I haven’t had that much time to think about it, really—and.”

He paused, awkward.

“Well, the thing is that it’s in all likelihood a _healing_ quirk,” The detective said, with something akin to a grimace. “And you understand why we’re reluctant to test a self-healing quirk. Especially one that manifested like yours.”

The silence hung weighty.

“But you _can_ test them,” Izuku said, wracking his memory. “There’s ways. Every quirk that exists can be tested, if nothing else by someone with a quirk analysis quirk.”

“Yes, there are some people who can see or otherwise interpret quirks,” The detective agrees. “And other methods besides. However, the good news is, as far as quirk manifestations go your case isn’t quite that urgent. We’re content to let you monitor the situation for now.”

Izuku looked to his mom.

“Do we need to fill out any paperwork?” She asked.

The detective grimaced.

“That actually ties into our secondary matter, but before we get into that…” He trailed off. “Young man, it’s very important that you not try anything dangerous to activate your quirk. It could have been a one time thing, or it could activate under _very_ specific parameters. There’s still a lot we don’t know about quirks in general. Promise me you won’t jump off any buildings just to try to activate your quirk.”

He maintains eye contact and Izuku swallows, a little, at the suddenly serious air.

“I wouldn’t.” He says quietly. “I won’t, I mean. I think I have a few ideas to—safely—explore the parameters of my quirk and none of them involve hurting myself.”

“Good.” The detective rests both hands on his knees, leaning forward. “I think you have the kind of attitude a hero-in-training needs, young man. There’s students enrolled in hero courses right now who would jump off a bridge trying to test a new facet of their quirks, and nevermind the consequences.”

“I won’t.” Izuku repeats, and means it. His heart soars a little.

 _I think you have the kind of attitude a hero needs_.

It’s not there—not quite—but with a Shiba sitting up in the back of his mind he doesn’t _need_ to hear the words themselves. This morning it had been an aching, all-consuming need, to hear it from someone else; the reassurance, the belief, the words _You CAN become a hero!_

The detective smiles at him and Izuku musters a shaky smile back.

“The registration of new quirks isn’t actually a police matter. Like your blood type and finger prints, it’s maintained by the Citizen Registration Office, specifically the Department of Quirk Identification, who as you know work closely with police, heroes, social services and the school districts. Ms. Midoriya, I think you can safely make an appointment for—say—a month from now, and they can guide you both through any further paperwork, depending on what you’ve noticed.”

He handed a card to Izuku’s mother, which she took with a relieved smile. This was sensical; this was in order. Izuku’s mother always did like it when things were clearly lined up in front of her. It helped with her anxiety and, in turn, with Izuku’s.

“Now, onto the other matter.”

Ah, hell.

If Izuku had any sense in his head at all, he’d have wiped Kacchan’s memory of the events before stepping into his body again. Granted, that spell was finicky at best, and it’s entirely possible the explanation his brain would have suggested _was_ a suicide attempt.

Well, it was too late now. Izuku carefully didn’t let his breathing get ahead of him.

“The fact that you weren’t trying to kill yourself is excellent, Midoriya-san.” The doctor said, speaking up for the first time in a moment. “But you have to understand how it looked from the outside. Moreover, you very well _could_ have been. It’s a bad situation all around.”

“Mr. Bakugou should have never said that to you.” The detective continued. “He’s confessed to telling you earlier today—”

A pause, barely perceptible, as he flips open a pocket notebook and reads—

Izuku braces himself—

“I’ve got a suggestion for you. If you want to be a hero so badly, why don’t you pray for a quirk in your next life and take a swan dive off the roof?”

His mother makes a wounded sound next to him and Izuku’s chest feels tight.

“Does that sound correct, Mr. Midoriya?”

Izuku is, for the first time in a long while, gripped with the urge to _lie_.

“Yes.” He admits. “Kacchan said that.”

“ _Izuku_!”

“He didn’t _mean_ it.” Izuku protested. “I mean, that’s no excuse, he shouldn’t have _said_ it. It could have ruined his hero career if I’d actually been considering it. I wasn’t! He shouldn’t have said it at all, it was an awful and cruel thing to say, but he didn’t _really want me to do it_. He wants me to stop trying to get into U.A. so that he can be the only one from our school to get in.”

“Has it occurred to you that, if you _had_ killed yourself, he might have eliminated the competition?”

Izuku flinched hard, then laughed.

“Kacchan does _not_ consider me competition. He considers me useless, and annoying, and he wishes I would shut up and accept my place as a quirkless nobody, but—he doesn’t want me dead. I know that, I _believe_ that. They were just poking fun at me.”

His voice was firm.

“Bullying.” The detective’s statement made him look up.

“What?”

“It’s not _poking fun at you_. It’s bullying, at best. Harassment and assault, at worst. Or now attempted murder, depending on how you look at it.”

“Kacchan _wasn’t trying to kill me_.” Izuku protested, wanting to nip that in the bud right now. “He _shouldn’t_ have said it. It was wrong. He shouldn’t have been making fun of me, either. I can admit that.”

 _Now._ He took a breath. Met the detective’s eyes.

“But you and I both know nobody will _ever_ get in trouble for ‘bullying’ a quirkless kid.” Izuku’s grin was brittle and humorless. “They were just overenthusiastic in using their quirks, you realize. The other child doesn’t have a quirk so he’s _fragile_ , it was perfectly normal rough housing. They’re just children. They have good futures ahead of them, strong quirks, the potential for heroics. And besides, it’s _true_. Should we punish them for saying the truth? He _is_ quirkless. He doesn’t have a future in heroics. It’s best he understand now instead of getting his hopes up.”

The detective sucked in air. The doctor winced. Izuku’s mom started crying again.

“Calling me quirkless, useless, a nobody—it’s not bullying. Not really.” Izuku looks at his hands in his lap, on top of the hospital bed’s blanket. “But they’re wrong.”

He looks up, his eyes bright green and blazing.

“I’m not useless, or a nobody—I’m going to be an amazing hero. It doesn’t matter if I have a useful quirk or not.”

“Well hell, kid. I bet you will be. But here’s the thing: it _is_ illegal to push someone to suicide, whether you mean it or not, so Mr. Bakugou is in trouble and he’s going to be punished for it no matter what you say. We have multiple witnesses. That said: do you want to press further charges?”

“No.” Izuku said, and held his mom’s hand tight when she started to protest. “No, I don’t want to press charges. Can I suggest something, though?”

“Worst we can say is ‘no.’” The detective shrugged.

“How does ‘community service’ look on permanent records?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goddamn I ought to be doing homework, how did it get this late? Either way, please enjoy. I have a good idea of where I want this to go so I'm very stoked to eventually get there!


	5. Dithering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Surge, water and heaven.” He says, already twirling it as her hand falls away, and soon it’s a unique trident in his hand. She steps back, grey eyes-- like morning, foggy sea-- hooded, and when he spins it behind him and raises it up in a graceful arc, half the ocean behind him rises with it.

Izuku realizes, almost immediately: _I can’t hold back_.

He’s going to have to find some way to cover _everything_ under the aegis of his new quirk, because otherwise he won’t be able to keep up the lie. All it will take is one person in danger, one collapsed building, one man, woman or child that he can help with an ability he hasn’t listed—

And he’d do it.

He can’t ever imagine a situation where he’d let someone get hurt—let someone _die_ —because he wanted or needed to keep his full abilities a secret.

So. How can he do that without, necessarily, listing all his abilities? He doesn’t want to give them all away, but neither does he want to chose some quirk description that can’t be stretched to include something he reveals later. Quirks grow and change with the user, after all.

He’s already decided he won’t be without Nejibana. It’s selfish, maybe, but she’s _literally his soul_ and fighting without her seems wrong in every way. Besides that, she’s easily his strongest ability, and the first one he’d rely on in a pinch.

A warm wave of appreciation wafted out from his soulscape, so familiar yet unexpected that he almost tripped. Izuku scowled at the pile of junk next to him.

As comfortable as Shinigami were, for the most part, being high enough to surveil a city and note any oncoming hollows, he’d decided to forgo heights for the moment. At least until he could reliably exit this body or, even more conveniently, use Hohō from within it.

He’d found, easily enough once he set his mind to it, the perfect place for quiet practice and experiments in Dagobah beach.

The junkyard piles towered so high they literally hid him from view.

Also, the surf was right _there_ , and he hasn’t got this far without acknowledging his partner’s nature and how it reflects on him.

 _The strongest water-type Zanpakutou_.

Another wave of warmth wrapped around his heart and Izuku was thankful, once more, that his bond with his sword spirit was so deep and reciprocated.

Maybe even deep enough for…?

“Nejibana.” He called, holding out his hand, and for the barest second he considered doubting her—doubting himself—but the confidence he felt in their partnership eclipsed all that in an all-consuming wave.

They’d never cared much for what others deemed impossible.

Her hilt materlialized in his hand and he was already moving, twisting through familiar forms, the kata she’d taught him and he’d learned knee deep in the surf, pulling back and surging forward, lunging and rising and falling like the tide, crashing down like waves they commanded.

It was a dance, it was the sea, it was every bit of water on this planet under their command.

One day.

Six hundred years alive, over five hundred of them as a Shinigami, and Bankai had been closer than he’d ever cared admit to anyone. He hadn’t wanted captaincy—not really. He was more than happy to care for _his_ Taichou and love his wife, his idiot uncle, his younger siblings who he would die for—

It was there, though, just past tasting. He would never push for it, never disrespect Nejibana in that way, and it was that insistent respect and honor that had her just about pushing it into his palm. Maybe he would have tried it, reached for those words just on the tip of his tongue, if he hadn’t been so blinded by rage and grief—

If Nejibana hadn’t _been destroyed_ so early on in the fight, breaking him further.

A wave of sorrow echoed to him from within and from her hilt, a shimmer of comfort.

“I was so worried about it,” He told her, voice higher pitch than he can ever remember. Her weight is heftier now, heavier. It feels right, in this form weighed down by mortal breath and muscle. “About being worthy of you, honoring you, treating you as you deserved.”

The sword in his hands breaks into sea foam and water vapor, a woman rising up from the waves.

She steps on them like Shinigami step on air, walking to him, long dress not wet for all it trails behind her feet. She looks perfectly human except for the gold of her eyes, the slitted pupil, the aquatic frills where human women keep their ears.

“ _We_ deserve it,” She corrected, voice low and creaky like ships destroying each other passing too close. “You have always respected when I told you _not yet_ ; never pushed me for more. Why do you resist when I deem us ready?”

“I don’t know.” He admits, not flinching when she steps closer, when his sword materializes in her hand and rises to kiss his throat.

He trusts her completely. That’s the problem, isn’t it? He trusts her completely, so why not in this?

“You’re _mine_ , Shiba Kaien—Midoriya Izuku—the name you wear doesn’t matter. The body you wear does not matter. That’s _my_ soul you’ve got, my power, and we will dance _together_. I can’t be alone any more.”

Her voice breaks and Izuku kills the hesitance in him. He reaches for the hilt in her hand, closing long fingers around her own slightly-webbed and slender, and moves with her until the sword is away from his neck and off to the side.

“Surge, water and heaven.” He says, already twirling it as her hand falls away, and soon it’s a unique trident in his hand. She steps back, grey eyes-- like morning, foggy sea-- hooded, and when he spins it behind him and raises it up in a graceful arc, half the ocean behind him rises with it.

The wave surges, crashing down at nothing, and the tide leaps high at the towers of junk in the splash.

He doesn’t want to get wet and so it passes around him, not touching him at all, and he directs and guides the streams of water as strongly as he dares with this gigai. Pushing too much reiatsu through it will burn it out and it’s _his_ body, not some random corpse or artificial creation, so he has to mind that.

Still. It seems to be holding up fairly well. Perhaps because it _is_ his? Perhaps because it’s not rejecting the soul inside, and is in fact strengthened by it?

Izuku spins the blade, commanding the tide, and with one surging line raises the trident above his head.

“Soar, Nejibana!” He cries, and a serpent of water roars out of the ocean, much more solid than it should be. He doesn’t get wet sitting on it and it soars into the heavens, further out over the ocean just in case anyone is watching, and by the time anyone could look up they’re already ten miles out and above the clouds for good measure.

“I’m scared to use Bankai in this body!” He shouts over the sound of rushing wind. When he turns, Nejibana is there, standing at his shoulder.

“It would likely not hold up under the strain.” She nods. Her eyes are still expectant.

“I hesitate to say I don’t have time for Bankai training, because nothing could be more important than your happiness and our partnership, but it _isn’t_ wise for me to begin such an undertaking right now. I want to give you the full breadth of my attention, all of the care you deserve, and have no distractions from our training.”

She inclines her head. He waits.

“We are in agreement.” She says, and he breathes out in relief. “I estimate it will take eight weeks of nonstop training to master our Bankai. When the time comes, we will not stop—not for anything. So we will choose this time wisely.”

“We are in agreement.” He echoes, bowing his head.

He may be old but she is _ancient_ , truly immortal, as all Zanpakutou spirits are, but more than that one of the _primal_ elemental spirits. Like Hyōrinmaru, like Ryūjin Jakka, she is the most powerful spirit of her element, and has been bonding to Shinigami for much longer than the Gotei has existed.

There’s some who consider the ramifications of that on the matter of soul reincarnation, of destiny and fate.

“I need to list a _quirk_ ,” He says, sounding much like Shiba Kaien in that moment. He indulges in a familiar flight of fancy, laying down on the sea serpent’s head like he might flop down in the grass of a meadow, hair mussed but not wet.

He eyes the sky, not so much steering as flying onwards, where the air has started to thin and he’d be cold if she didn’t keep the water vapor around warm for him.

“Just one, is the trouble. What one quirk could encompass all _this?_ ” He gestures, and at some point she’d settled down beside him.

“’Quirk: Shinigami?’” She suggests, with laughter in her voice.

“No, can’t be.” He sighs. “Kido spells don’t even _sound_ alike, though they’re the most versatile. I guess I could go with that?”

“’Quirk: Kido?’”

“Perhaps ‘Quirk: Spellchant.’ Or something.” He hums, enjoying the warm sun. “Do you think that would work? Maybe my quirk is that when I chant for healing, I get healing. Maybe when I chant for fire, I get fire.”

“Maybe when you chant for all the water of the sea, all the water in the sky, to obey you, it will.”

“There’s _not_ a chant for some things though. Kaido number one, for one. Or—Shunpo.” He ran a hand through his hair, mussing it.

Nejibana was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice lilted at the corners of her mouth, clearly smiling.

“Do _they_ know that?”

He turned to her, startled at the idea.

“No…” He realized, slowly, turning the idea over in his head. “They… really don’t. I could—could just—”

“ _Make something up_ ,” She grinned, with far too many pointed teeth; every story of a mermaid, a siren, a pretty woman of the sea who lured men to their untimely demise.

He laughed out loud, the sound almost punched out of him.

“What kind of spell do you think _Hohō_ would have?” He wondered, mind alight with all the possibilities, and the sun sparkled off the water vapor kicked up in their wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still no homework and I have work in 5.25 hours. This AU has officially eaten my life. I hope you like it! These are, of course, first drafts of the fic. When I finished I might take them in hand and arrange them with better pacing. We'll see!
> 
> I thought it was canon but apparently "Soar, Nejibana" and sea serpent ability are from a fic found here https://archiveofourown.org/works/734469/chapters/1365581


	6. Shaky First Steps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary of Terms:
> 
> Hakufuku: A kido Momo and Gin used, causes purple flower petal genjutsu that puts you to sleep.
> 
> Spirit Ribbons: A sensing technique to find people. Ichigo and Ishida used it. Soul reapers are red, everyone else is white.
> 
> Hohō: The art of moving with which flash step/Shunpo is a part. 
> 
> Shunpo: Flash steps
> 
> Reiryoku: The thing that I keep wanting to call Reiatsu because the anime hurt me, but this is the internal energy and Reitsu is what you use to crush people, like an aura. Reiatsu is also what you use to power techniques? Don't @ me
> 
> Reishi: Spirit Particles. Everything in Soul Society is made out of them, quincies photosynthesize them, and many beings gather it under their feet to create platforms.
> 
> Facts: I *Adore* the way the Noble families are described in this fic ( https://archiveofourown.org/works/14777843?view_full_work=true , it's way too late for me to hyperlink tbh) so I'll be incorporating that into this shamelessly.

It has been three days since he ejected his soul from his body, two since he’s been outside of the hospital, and a few hours since he begrudgingly left the sunset sky behind and returned to the earth.

It’s late. They’ve eaten dinner and his mother is long asleep.

Izuku watches the shadows of his ceiling until his thoughts settle and then he moves in the darkness. His feet touch the floor, whisper soft.

He pauses outside her door, leaning his forehead against it, and mutters the incantation for Hakufuku under his lips. It doesn’t need to be very powerful at all, the slightest touch of spiritual pressure.

“Dark purple, pale rose, the iris waves under the gnarled boughs; shatter, stars of bloom! Dream!”

Already asleep, even a moderately powerful shinigami would have trouble resisting. His mother is not a Shinigami. Her restless sleep evens out into something deep and quiet.

He takes the stairs up to the roof of their apartment building.

The night spreads out silky and black below him, stars obscured by a thick layer of residual light. It’s nothing like the view from the Shiba Estates, the inky starscape that extended quietly into forever, but—

The cool wind hits his face feeling like freedom.

He’s often thought that life needed a soundtrack and now is no different, shoe scuffing concrete and plant detritus and soft city noises sounding below.

This isn’t the tallest building around, not by a long shot, but by happy coincidence it’s the tallest on the block. Izuku spends long minutes just breathing, trying to get into the right headset for a very advanced technique.

It’s something some never accomplish, but like most hellishly complicated things, Kaien had the advantage. _Genius_ they called him, because they didn’t have another word for someone who had grown up with his sword’s voice in his ear, paying careful mind to the clan teachings; who happened to have the stubbornness to work day after day to _control_ the massive amount of Reiryoku he’d been blessed with.

Izuku lets those thoughts sink into the ocean in his mind, battered and beaten by Nejibana’s current until they were in too many pieces to bother him, sinking back into the harmless recesses of untapped memory.

He breathes, and raises a hand.

A spirit ribbon slides between his fingers as though it’s always been there, the first presence he’d called to mind. Kacchan’s, because Izuku hardly knows anyone in this life compared to his last one—friends and colleagues and _nakama_ , his brother and sister and uncle and _wife_ —

The thread, silky smooth and white, vanishes before Izuku can make out more than a direction, about a mile east. Though they didn’t share an apartment complex like they had as children, the Bakugou residence wasn’t far. They were still neighbors.

He centered himself, took up the shattered pieces of his concentration, and cast them out like a wide net. _Red_ , he thought. _Something red, please._

He waited, night wind buffeting his hair, brow creased with concentration. He let the search fall through like a pond returning to still water, and then cast out again—and again, and again.

Each time he threw more energy into the net, the advanced version of merely _watching_ spirit ribbons, seeking out Shinigami red.

Finally, just when he has begun to give up, there’s… something.

He snags the ribbon immediately, holding on too tight, and has to work to calm his breathing. He couldn’t get worked up or he’d lose the thread and then he’d really need to destroy something.

The thread in his hand is red.

It’s muted, almost like he’s sensing it from underwater, and there’s something—else—

It feels like, if spirit ribbons could be any color beyond purely red or purely white, this one would be red and black and pink and white and _silvery-blue_ all at once.

He stares at it in mingled desperate relief and puzzlement.

What on earth could a soul be, to feel this way? Even in a world of quirks and super heroes, incredibly advanced technology and what might as well be _magic_ , it’s strange.

His fingers tingle where they touch it, wrapping it around and around until he’s got a steady grip. Part of him thought _it’s red_ and left it at that, glad for anything after his grasping for straws, but.

But.

Kaien’s skill with Reiatsu control-- with Kido and the abilities of his Zanpakutou especially, though his Hohō and Shunpo were nothing to sneeze at—were _prodigious_. Only his reluctance to learn Bankai, his sheer _contentment_ with his life, prevented him from becoming a captain. As it was, he was one of the twentieth strongest souls in the afterlife by virtue of rank alone, and he wielded the strongest water-type Zanpaktou in creation.

He was the head of one of the Five Great Noble Clans, the Royal Guards assigned duties by the Soul King himself.

And he could sense, from a high-level technique that few outside his clan even bothered with, that this ribbon belonged to a _Shiba_.

Izuku didn’t pay much heed to this body’s legs, or whether or not he _could_.

He pushed Reiatsu to his legs, having had centuries of experience with getting it to do exactly what he wanted, and _moved_.

Between one instant and the next he blurred out of sight, less in one direction than disappearing entirely. One step barely took him half a mile.

He was rusty—too rusty by far—and this body didn’t feel like he was used to. He was shorter, of course, and skinnier—but also it was _heavy_ , weighed down with the burden of living flesh where a soul was _light_ , and it took more Reiatsu for the same task, modulated much more carefully to avoid absolutely destroying the muscles entirely.

He took another step, kicking off of a hotel. Another.

The fourth step took him a mile and a half.

Izuku landed on thin air, waiting for his Shihakusho to flutter against his legs—but of course he wasn’t wearing it. Pulling together Reishi for Hohō came naturally. He paused only long enough to gauge his location—eyeing the cityscape below _exactly_ like someone who spent years and years methodically preparing to patrol it as a pro hero—

\-- Red ribbon still clutched rigidly in his hand--

\--And took another step.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How is quarantine, my guys? My work now consists of staring at a screen for ten or eleven hours so when I'm done, I can stare at a screen for pleasure and fandom stuff. Great times! But I digress. I had a bit of a stall due to the aforementioned stresses and how I needed to beat my head against plot decisions with some people in my discord, but I think I have that particular plot kink ironed out. We'll see!
> 
> Thank you for reading so far. I know I uploaded all five of the previous chapters on one day, but I'm thankful so far for the comments I received on the individual chapters anyway. I should also say that I've been inventing my own kido Because I Can by bastardizing the order of stanzas from Japanese poetry, and making use of the imperative tense.
> 
> (Some of those poems are here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27199/27199-h/27199-h.htm ). I'll probably make a big list at the end just to show what all I did, because I'm fairly proud of it.
> 
> I'm not looking for concrit now or pretty much ever, but I'd adore hearing what you liked about this! It's really great motivation to keep going and I reread comments often. They totally make my days.


	7. the light of truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Never had he seen the burly man so out of sorts, and he’d seen him as a child, dogging the heels of Kisuke and Yoruichi and Kukaku in one big ragtag group he kept fed and watered when they were set lose on his estate.
> 
> “Shiba Kaien. If I had not seen it, I would not have believed it.”
> 
> “It’s Midoriya Izuku now,” He corrected kindly, smoothing down the black of his Shihakusho. He’d put on about a foot of height. Supposedly souls were supposed to reflect the body they were born in, but reincarnation was also supposed to be a clean slate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stuck the Glossary on the bottom for aesthetics!! So here's the "Normal" bottom note. Love comments, hate concrit, love y'all, hate the quarantine, love working from home, love fanfic.
> 
> Important DISCLAIMER! The thing about the Shiba and other great families being the royal guard: from this fic!!!!!! https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/35070584
> 
> The speech Kaien gives! That begins "I am Kaien of the Shiba!" Is DIRECTLY using the format from the above fic. I adore it. It's a great bit of worldbuilding. It's not mine. Not even a little bit mine! Neither are the incantations for the canon Kido, obviously, but I don't have to say that part because it's obvious. Specifically, other than the format and the idea itself being from that fic, this part is identical: "son of Ichiryū, the first of three, (second) of twenty-two" Because Ichiryu is a great name for Issin's dad, and Kaien happens to be the first of his three siblings; but obviously if Isshin is the fourthborn, I want Kaien's dad to be the secondborn for plot reasons. I came up with Kaien's father's name, but given that you're not asking Kubo to use permission to use his ideas, and I'm not asking permission to use fandom ideas (with credit), then obviously you don't have to ask me to use it. Just don't pretend it's yours, as I'm not pretending that bit's mine!

The odd red Reiraku leads him to a forest nestled in the shadow of a mountain. It’s large, going as far as the eye can see even from his heavenly vantage point, and Izuku descends with his heart hammering in his chest.

There’s a reason he didn’t just open a Senkaimon.

Izuku’s steps lead him down. It was obvious from above, but at ground level there’s no way to know that the entire area is situated in a bowl-like divot, like a prehistoric crater that life found a way to flourish in.

Eventually.

But whatever impact happened here, the forest is well established and Izuku, despite the burning pain in his legs, continues into it. Trees tower over him, well-forged giants, and they’re so thick there’s hardly any underbrush.

Kaido #1: Mystic Palm works by replenishing and then loosely directing Reiatsu. What does that mean? That a body which _isn’t_ missing any Reiatsu heals its own self, over time. Kaido #2: Regeneration is literally just a trade-off of more reiatsu for faster healing time. Given enough time, his full Reiatsu stores would take care of his legs. It’s likely he’d be fine my morning, or the day after, depending on how this gigai tolerated it

Or he could use Kaido #2 and burn twice the Reiatsu it _would_ need, in order to speed up that time frame drastically.

He spends the energy to rapidly increase his own muscle regeneration. It doesn’t work for anything crazy. For example, it can’t regrow a limb and if used on an amputation site, it will accelerate the body’s _natural_ response: the wound scabbing over, weeks of healing in a few days or hours depending, almost directly, on how much Reiatsu you shoved into the technique.

When it’s done he finds himself even more winded than expected.

Absently he catches himself muttering. He has _got_ to find the measure of this body’s limits, but testing that without accidentally going _over_ said limits…

Izuku walks past the edge of a clearing without the realization that it was coming. He stops, surprised. Nothing about the forest indicated an upcoming cessation in foliage.

There’s a shop sitting in the middle of a perfect sphere. It looks a little run down, but nothing too crazy, and the way it sits bugs and bugs him until it _clicks_ and he notices why.

It looks exactly like this shop crashed down here, because the trees rub up against the sides of some invisible yet perfectly geometric barrier. But of course it didn’t; there’s no way. These trees spent decades if not longer filling in the gouged out scar on the earth.

There’s no damage to them, nothing to indicate the trees were already here and the shop’s barrier cut a perfect circle into the fully grown forest.

Which means, of course, that the shop was here first.

And the shop doesn’t look hundreds of years old.

Letters adorn the storefront, faded out and unmaintained. Dingy, but recently abandoned.

Izuku had stepped right through the barrier without even feeling it as soon as he cleared the tree line, so he walks forward cautiously. A kido barrier, obviously, and not one he recognizes.

That should be impossible.

From the inside it glows golden, a perfect bubble of suspended space and distorted time.

He hadn’t seen the cut off coming because it didn’t exist, yet. Until he stepped through the barrier, every sense’s perception would tell him there was more forest directly ahead; the forest on the other side of the barrier, pressed together like he’d minimized a column in a spreadsheet program.

But the column existed.

Izuku barely looked around. He couldn’t afford to be too shocked or too surprised; he’d lose the ribbon wound so ardently around his hand.

So he walks, like a dumbass, right to the doors of the shop and huffs when they open right up for him.

Of course.

He takes a cautious step forward and the lights click on overhead, following him when he continues forward. Click, click, click, the frozen pizza isle at the grocery store at six a.m., lighting up in his wake.

A dry mist starts up at his feet, appropriately mystical.

No, it’s fog.

It’s not dramatic enough to keep him from noticing that he’s standing in the middle of a candy shop. Izuku alone, the Izuku of last week, would have been jumping at every shadow.

There’s a television, one of the older models, tacked up in the corner behind the counter.

It flicks on. A face appears, slowly coming into focus, with all the trappings of a camera feed.

“Young one.” Begins a low, penetrating voice, coming from everywhere. “Long has this shop lie dormant, protected under a spectral shield. Waiting, patiently, for the right person to come along to wake it.”

“It is you! You, who have passed through the barrier. You, who have been chosen by fate. You, chosen one—”

Izuku steps forward on numb feet, reaching for the screen like he could touch the man behind it.

“Tessai?” He asks, blinking hard to keep back tears.

Izuku had always been a crybaby.

The building dramatic speech stops short. The fog, having been in the process of filling the room, meanders back to the floor.

And the big brown man on the television pauses, visibly caught off guard.

“Do… I know you?” He squints at Izuku through the glasses. In another corner, a security camera whirrs as if zooming in on his face.

“Tsukabishi Tessai.” Izuku scrubs at his face, laughing through the tears. “You’re alive!”

“Well.” Tessai shuffles, a touch awkward. “That would be a bit of an overstatement.”

“In what way?” Izuku can’t kill the bubbling joy inside him, the resurgence of hope in response to such a familiar face.

“Well, familiar stranger, if you know me then you must know of the proprietor of this shop, my employer: Urahara Kisuke-dono.”

Izuku’s caught himself roughly on the edge of the counter when his legs gave out.

“Kisuke-kun survived?” He’d hoped, of course. By god he’d hoped. If anyone was able to face the nightmare Aizen created that night and the horrors of exile, it was Kisuke.

“Who _are_ you?” Tessai rumbled, giving himself away. Curiosity laced thick through his voice, intelligible through the technology.

Though he’d nearly pulled his hair out over the last few days, it figured that the answer would jump to his fingertips the moment he truly _needed_ it.

Like the fog dying down in the wake of his question, his present need sliced through the jumbled mess of his memory. And there it was, the spell he needed, incantation clear as day.

“Evening mist congeal! Glimmering memory, birdsong, pleasure on that side of death. Swan-feathered, the angels toss their clothes! _Midorikaze!_ ”

A pale green wind swept him up, feet just leaving the ground with a spin before his body shattered into shards of emerald light.

“Midorikaze.” Tessai echoed. “You…”

Never had he seen the burly man so out of sorts, and he’d seen the man as a child, dogging the heels of Kisuke and Yoruichi and Kukaku in one big ragtag group he kept fed and watered when they were let lose on his estate.

“Shiba Kaien. If I had not seen it, I would not have believed it.”

“It’s Midoriya Izuku now,” He corrected kindly, smoothing down the black of his Shihakusho. He’d put on about a foot of height. Supposedly souls were supposed to reflect the body they were born in, but reincarnation was also supposed to be a clean slate.

“You entered the cycle of rebirth, then?” The gravelly voice sounded grave.

Izuku scratched his head. The question tugged at his brain, a line of logic he’d been struggling with unconsciously.

“I don’t know why I remember, I know I’m not supposed to, but the way you said that…” He said. “Did someone… not?”

“Shiba Kaien-fukutaicho… Or Midoriya-senpai, if that is your new life in this world. It is with great regret that I tell you: no one survived, and to my knowledge, no one has entered the cycle of rebirth since Yhwach killed them all.”

The works yanked Izuku’s heart out of his chest. For a moment he was only Kaien of the Shiba, lieutenant of the thirteenth.

He’d theorized a lot since waking up to this new world. He thought small things might have changed; Aizen’s behind-the-scenes machinations, killing good people and running sick experiments. He feared nothing had.

In his wildest dreams enough time had passed that most of the people he knew on the Gotei had been gotten rid of or died fighting or moved on somehow, and he’d be facing a new cadre of captains with a few familiar faces.

Never in his worst musings had he imagined _everyone gone_. It wasn’t possible. It just didn’t make sense. How could everyone be _gone_?

“The captains, you mean?” He asked, voice scraping raw.

Tessai looked steadily on, eyes sympathetic in his otherwise stone face.

“Every soul with a drop of Reiatsu was culled in one final, mad grab for power. It was instant. Yhwach annihilated everyone in Soul Society, and all of the spiritually aware humans in the Living World, and those present at the Soul King’s Palace—the Gotei—stopped at nothing trying to destroy him for it. One by one they failed. Finally, one soul managed to slay him, but by then it was far too late. The king of heaven is dead. Soul society has fallen.”

“The soul king is _not_ dead,” Kaien snapped, anger rising like the tide.

“The instinct to deny it is—”

“Don’t bullshit me, Tsukabishi. It is a _knowing_.” He tries to find the right words and fails. Tessai’s expression morphs into something akin to pity and Kaien _snarls_.

“Nevermind that people are born every day. Nevermind that creation hasn’t burned to ashes. All the proof you need is right here before you!” He slams both hands onto the wooden countertop.

“I am Kaien of the Shiba!” The true name rang out with the authority of heaven behind it, reitsu striking through the words like a bell. “Known as Guardian, wielder of Nejibana, living vessel of all Kido. I am the son of Kosaka-jin, son of Ichiryū, the first of three, the second of twenty-two, and the twentieth head of the Shiba.”

Like before, the moment he _needed_ it, the right spell jumped to his mind.

“The Great Lord echoes through the heavens,

A blazing red flower in full bloom

Mortal sight, adorn righteous glory

There aloft, bright! Holy splendor,

The Great Lord resounds through earth and sky!”

He shoves his hand to the ceiling and calls,

“Sorashiryoku!”

It takes barely a drop of power. This isn’t a spell powered by his own Reiatsu.

A red witchlight flares out his hand, hits the ceiling, and explodes into light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary!
> 
> Kaido: Healing spell. The term exists in canon, but canon barely touches on Kido, so. In canon there's only one healing spell. In my fic that's the Kaido #1 that tldr is the default healing response.
> 
> Kaido #1: Mystic Palm. The healing spell Shinigami use in canon. Name from Naruto.
> 
> Kaido #2: Regeneration. A golden-orange light that speeds up your natural healing for twice the reiatsu burn, give or take.
> 
> Reiraku: Spirit ribbon. Red for shinigami, white for human.
> 
> Senkaimon: big ass gate to soul society. Needs a hell butterfly for passage or some tunnel monster eats you.
> 
> Reiatsu: like mana but for jutsu. I mean, kido and sword hits.
> 
> Uncategorized spell: Midorikaze (green wind). This is the spell shinigami use to exit their gigais.
> 
> Gigai: Either a corpse you've magically made a vessel that a shinigami can wear around for a time, or an artificial body that shinigami can wear around for a time, created by the twelfth division but mostly Kisuke.
> 
> Uncategorized spell: Sorashiryoku: The soul king's light, or 'skysight'. Summons a manifestation of the Soul King's power to act as a miniature sun.
> 
> In canon there are no "uncategorized spells" (unless you count the ones that didn't have names) but Kubo also killed the Kido Corps he supposedly invented, so this is my sandbox now. In this verse Bakudo and Hado are specific numbered spells approved by and given to the Gotei, and spread throughout the military. From the Kido Corps. That's why the Gotei all know them, though skill varies, and why they're grouped so accordingly.


	8. The eternity of exposition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Where do Aizen and the Vizard tie into all of this?” He dared to ask, struggling to fit all of this information with what he knew of the world.
> 
> And god help them, Tessai told him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the summary! It may or may not stick. But the old one had to go.
> 
> GLOSSARY!
> 
> Kaido: Medical Kido (spells)
> 
> Reiatsu: chakra in the bleach universe, don't @ me
> 
> Rukongai: four cardinal directions of increasingly poorer people, facing out from Seireitei
> 
> reishi: spirit particles. 
> 
> Reiraku: spirit ribbon sensing technique 
> 
> I refuse to explain any of these Hollow terms since the 90000 billion words of exposition was bad enough. And on that note! ALL PARAGRAPHS WITH A LITTLE SUPERSCRIPT NUMBER ARE YOINKED DIRECTLY FROM THE WIKI. I tried. I tried so hard. It was entirely not worth it.

The light is loving. It’s warm. It’s brighter than three suns, trapped inside this tiny shop, and Kaien might be the caster but he’s also a goddamn idiot so he slams his eyes closed and flinches back so hard he goes flying, one hand already raised to heal the damage.

He has gone _decades_ without using a single Kaido and now he’s using them daily.

What is his life?

He lets his head thunk back against the cool wood floor, already being warmed by the literal but very small sun floating above them, using the Soul King’s splendor and—more importantly—his Reiatsu as a power source, the only reason that it’s not burning them alive.

Neither of them are traitors to the Throne of Heaven.

“What is this Kido?” Tessai’s voice asked, not yet visible to his still healing eyesight.

“It’s Skysight.” He huffs, sitting up from where he went down hard. “It’s a drop of the Soul King’s power, called on by a Royal Guard. In his light we gradually regain Reiatsu. I think there are some accounts of this spell being used to quickly grow crops when the Rukongai was experiencing hardships.”

“A spell powered by the Soul King himself…” Tessai huffed. “I have never heard anything like it.”

“You were Head of the Kido Corps.” Kaien acknowledges. “But I am head of the _Shiba_.”

Tessai bows his head.

“If I may, Midoriya-senpai…” Brown eyes look up once more. “How did you find us?”

The mental shift had him swaying a minute. Izuku huffed. He had asked to be referred to by this new name, after all—by _his_ name. He was Kaien, he _was_ , but that was never in question and his whole identity as Midoriya Izuku could be assimilated if he let it.

Izuku had respect for the cycle of souls. And, as easy as his memories flowed so far, he didn’t _want_ to disappear. Kaien’s life was long over. By the sound of things, everything he’d left behind was gone. But Izuku wasn’t. Izuku was right here, _alive_ , and he wanted to be a hero.

He had a mother and a dream.

But neither was Shiba Kaien gone and a clan head, especially a Royal Guard, had responsibilities. To say nothing of the duty of a soul reaper.

Izuku took a deep breath, ignored his identity crisis, and hissed out a curse as he realized the red ribbon in his hand had dissolved into reishi some time ago.

“I followed the Reiraku.” He said. “There was a red ribbon that led me here. I guess that was yours?”

“That’s highly doubtful.” Tessai stroked his chin, not quite making eye contact. “Did the ribbon feel…?”

“Like a Hollow, _and_ a quincy, and everything else thrown in for good measure?” His voice twisted wrlyy. He fixed Tessai with the same ‘out-with-it’, unimpressed eyebrow that had worked on all four of them when Kukaku was small.

It worked now.

“Urahara-dono… engineered a few failsafes, should the worst come to pass.”

Izuku’s brain still struggled to wrap around it _, the fall of soul society_ , so it was safe to say that the worst had indeed come to pass.

He resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. Failsafes designed and executed by the one who proposed, campaigned for and _succeeded_ in developing a whole new division just for the new technology his big brain couldn’t stop inventing.

He was almost afraid to ask.

 _Almost_. His heart was beating so quick. Tessai said it wasn’t his ribbon and Izuku _knew_ that, of course he did, he knew damn well because—

“It’s a Shiba.” He blurted out, appearing for just a moment the age of this body. “I felt someone from my _clan_.”

Not everyone is dead.

“There… hm.” Tessai propped his chin on his fist on the screen. “I scarcely know where to begin, Senpai. How do I explain Kurosaki Ichigo to someone who wasn’t there? I’m afraid you truly had to see it to believe it.”

“Kurosaki… Ichigo.” Izuku’s tongue shapes out the syllables. It’s not a familiar name at all, and that hurts, but it sounds just enough like Ichiryū that he can hope.

They never found Isshin’s body.

“Your cousin, I believe. Son of Kurosaki Masaki and Isshin. To wit: born half Shinigami, half quincy, and raised human. A childhood incident planted the seeds of a despair in his soul, and through his life he faced again and again the circumstances that would water it into a fully fledged Hollow.”

Izuku had to settle himself.

“Like Lisa and the others?”

“They called themselves _Vizard_.” Tessai said. “And young Ichigo took up the name as well, eventually.”

“What were they like?” Izuku asks. “I… the closest I can imagine is a rare form of Hollow I found out about, years after that night. _Arrancar_.”

“Hmm, yes. Naturally occurring Arrancar did appear in a few old tombs. Urahara-dono sought them out religiously, in the beginning.”

He would. Like Kaien, he’d have never given up searching for a cure. Unlike Kaien, even with his vast repertoire of Kido, he had a much higher chance of success.

“Naturally occurring?”

“Ah.” Tessai’s face moved to the corner of the screen and white space took up a home in the foreground. “If you don’t mind the visual, Sempai, I believe I can show it best…”

It reminded Izuku almost painfully of his own kohai, whose explanatory artwork only seemed to get worse with time.

He nodded.

“Very well then. As you know, run-of-the-mill Hollow form after a soul is consumed with strong emotion after the breaking of the Chain of Fate. From that point on they must eat souls in order to survive.”

Izuku nodded again, because if he gave any thought to the _Vizored_ potentially having to consume souls he was going to scream.

“Plus, Jibakurei, Hollow.” He recited.

“Just so.” Tessai peered at him. “And what forms can a Hollow further evolve into, beyond even the special intelligence or abilities old Hollows pick up in their infamy?”

“Menos-class.” Izuku answered, brow furrowing. They were a nightmare to deal with and thankfully _rare_.

It took a vice captain or a captain to purify one.

“Menos-class.” Tessai agreed gravely. “But what only a few souls ever knew, and soon all of the Gotei learned, I will share with you. The _Menos_ class of Hollow has many evolutions.”

Izuku blinked.

“Something _stronger_ than a Menos?” He demanded, a wave of nausea coming over him.

“What you know of as a Menos Grande is only the first stage of Menos evolution: a Gillian.”

The towering behemoths that ought not to exist. Unseated Shinigami could hack away at one for days with no results, a war of attrition that cut away at their numbers rather than the monster’s health.

“And then?”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. At the same time: he had to know. Had Aizen known?

“A moment, Senpai. What you must realize about the Menos is that they rarely, if ever, eat human souls. Do you know why this is?”

“No, not at all.” He’d never put much thought into the monsters, as that was never his branch of expertise. He studied their purification, of course, and he studied endless strategies against them, yet even he could admit he’d focused more on his own ability to combat them then their nature.

“Menos are created when the void within an ordinary Hollow's heart becomes so substantial Human souls are incapable of sustaining it, at which point it begins devouring fellow Hollows. These cannibal Hollows are attracted to one another, and a mass inter-devouring follows, resulting in a Gillian.”1

The mental image of _that_ was so horrific Izuku had to work his throat a minute to keep his dinner down.

“And that’s only the _first_ stage?”

Numbness spread through his gut.

Tessai nodded.

“I’m afraid so, Midoriya-senpai.” He gathered himself. “If one Hollow in this massive collection of misbegotten souls achieves control over the main body, it goes from being a mindless devourer to one with a dedicated goal. It eats any Hollow it can find, up to and even preferably other Gillian.”

“And it evolves.” Izuku guessed flatly.

“It does. Adjuchas are the second classification of Menos. They are smaller than Gillian, but much smarter and stronger, often the ones who lead Gillians into battle. Fortunately for us all, Adjuchas-class Menos are much smaller in population compared to the Gillian class, due to the rarity of any one Hollow being capable of overwhelming the many other Hollows which comprise the body of a Gillian. Furthermore, the Adjuchas must continue to devour Hollows, or its mind will be absorbed by the other Hollows comprising its form, and it will revert into a Gillian”2

“Fuck.” Izuku whispered hoarsely.

“Vasto Lorde are the third classification of Menos and the highest level of evolution. They are extremely rare in number, and it is said that their entire number within Hueco Mundo can be counted with the fingers on one's hands. The combat capabilities of a Vasto Lorde are said to be above those of the captains of the Gotei 13. We don’t know how they’re made.”3

“And Arrancar?” At this point he’s almost afraid to ask.

“Arrancar.” Tessai hums. “Urahara-dono theorized that any Menos class Hollow, once a dominant personality emerged, could become an Arrancar.”

“What _are_ they?”

“They are… the opposite, and the inverse, of a Vizard.”

“ _What_? But if a Vizard is a Shinigami who survives hollowification…”

“A Vizard is a Shinigami with a Hollow’s power. An Arranccar… is a Hollow with a _Shinigami_ ’s power.”

“Now you’re just fucking with me.” Izuku complained, but his heart wasn’t in it. He already knew he wasn’t. He ran a hand through his hair. “How does _that_ work?”

“I have… very little idea. Urahara-dono’s notes are complicated to the extreme. As I understand it, at some point and for some reason, in the case of an Arrancar, the dominant personality stops being a creature of mindless hunger. It feels something, some emotion, so strongly that it overcomes the hunger of its birth. At this point, the Hollow retains some level of humanity; some sort of rationality, or reason. It rips off its mask and the Arrancar is what emerges.”

“How does it just _rip off its mask_?” Izuku demands.

A Hollow without a mask. A _Hollow_ without a _mask._

“I assure you I have no idea as to the specifics.” Tessai says dryly. “We did know one such Arrancar, naturally occurring, who was an Adjuchas at the time. According to Ichigo, the arrancar— _Grimmjow_ —had such a drive for power and superiority that he forced himself to the next level.”

“They have names?” Izuku needed to sit. “Names that _we_ didn’t give them?”

Some Hollow grew to such an infamy that they were given identifiers in the field.

“They have first _and_ last names, usually. By all accounts, as loath as I am to say, they can think, reason, feel and even love. Several of their number sided with us against Aizen and, with the fate of three worlds at stake, joined swords with the Gotei in the end.”

His words were so solemn Izuku had to believe him.

Still.

He shook his head.

“Where do Aizen and the Vizard tie into all of this?” He dared to ask, struggling to fit all of this information with what he knew of the world.

And god help them, Tessai told him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> I actually feel kind of bad now because this is 9000% exposition BUT it's necessary to drag my plot forward so that I can actually introduce the other characters and then, perhaps, get on with this "become a hero" thing.
> 
> To those of you who guessed Ichigo: You were right!
> 
> However: there's still a twist! No one has guessed HOW, exactly, it's Ichigo. And all of you are going to be surprised.


	9. but the production of coexistence; this is desperation or resignation or hope.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ichigo’s eyes zero in on him with laser precision. For a split second he’s a fifteen-year-old with little idea what’s going on, vulnerable and unsure, but within moments he’s shrugged that off angrily.
> 
> “What did you do?” He squints in Kisuke’s direction. His eyes widen. “Oh, fuck me. I shouldn’t have agreed to any tests. Do I still have my organs? Where am I? _How many days until the execution?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is so frustrating! I have several versions of every reveal. First it was Kisuke who was an AI, then I decided Tessai as a smart house was funnier. There's been a lot of editing and arguing before I picked this version. Please remember that this entire story is essentially a first draft, which I'm posting as I go. If I need to, I'll take it down at the end and edit it into a more coherent narrative. Please remember I'm doing this for free on the internet.

Kisuke awakes to light, eyes squinting against it.

“You,” Izuku huffed, offering one hand to help him out of the pod, “Are a son of a bitch.”

Before Kisuke could do more than blink, Izuku heaved him out and into his arms.

“But you’re one of my brothers, and I love you. Thank you for living in your nonsense palace and making sure I wouldn’t wake up alone.”

“Tessai.” Kisuke’s voice sounds out, scratchy from disuse. He clears his throat. “Did we have a copy of Shiba Kaien’s memories, his reiatsu profile, and a clone body lying around, and I just erased my own memory of the experiment?”

“No, Urahara-dono.” Tessai’s amused voice comes out of the speakers. “Just you and the boys’.”

“Ah.” Kisuke nods smartly. A cute little divot appears at his forehead. He opens his mouth several times and closes it each time.

“You don’t get the credit for this one, Kisuke.” Izuku slings an arm over his shoulder amicably, bullying him over to the second pod. Kisuke stumbles where Izuku pulls him, newfooted, deerlike.

“What do you mean?” Kisuke asks as they come to a stop before the frosted glass. Too frosted, in fact, to make out who’s inside.

“None of your experiments led me to be here. I simply reincarnated, as is the natural order of things.”

Kisuke leaned all his weight on Izuku gratefully.

“That’s not the natural order of things.” He accused.

Izuku grinned with all his teeth.

“With all the afterlife-fuckery that’s gone on since my death, it _could_ be the new order of things. In fact it’s safe to say that my new incarnation’s near death experience caused my soul to shine through, just a tad.”

“You really think that’s what happened?”

“I think you’re gonna _find out_.” Izuku threatened, shaking him by the back of the neck. He angled them around so he could press Kisuke’s face against the glass like a kitten.

“Ah.” Kisuke spoke into the pod. “I see you want me to wake up your cousin.”

“That’s right.” All thirty-two teeth.

“And you would like me to do it… now? Before I have a chance to recover any spiritual pressure, or even get my bearings?”

Izuku shook him a little more, not truly cruel, but with the kind of shenanigans his sister and her friend got up to…

“Fine.” Kisuke sighed, truly put out. “Let me up, I’ve got to input the code sequence. His chamber wasn’t set up to open as easily as mine.”

“You do that.” Izuku let him go.

“ _Your funeral_.” The blonde grumbled, already pressing buttons and poking latches.

“What was that?”

Kisuke didn’t even feign apology.

“Kid’s going to come up swinging if I know _anything about him at all_.” Kisuke promised, pressing a final doohicky and then darting, snakefast, out of the way. He hid behind Izuku like he was a hundred and fifty years old again, old enough to know better but young enough to take the advantage when the girls were pissed.

Kaien had watched him take up the mantle of captain, had been so incredibly proud; but Kisuke would always be a _brat_ quietly following his sister’s girlfriend around. Alright, no—he hadn’t been a brat, not at first. It had taken decades to bring him out of his shell, the waifish little boy with no family, carrying himself with careful and tentative steps.

Watching him slowly let the Shiba become that family for him, where before it had been Yoruichi alone, meant that Izuku would pretty much always be more amused than mad at whatever shenanigans Kisuke decided to inflict on the world.

Even now it was hard to look at the man and not see the quiet eighty-year-old boy holding Ganju as a chubby baby.

Kisuke’s hands shamelessly hold onto Izuku’s shoulders as he peers around them. The pod door disengages with a hiss, expelling steam.

It’s like looking into a mirror.

Izuku boggles as his veritable twin sits up, looking unbearably young to be here. He has no mother in this time, no father—only Izuku. He swallows hard. It’s humbling.

But Izuku has been brother, parent and guardian for a young Shiba before.

“Hey, kiddo.” He chokes, holding out a hand.

Ichigo, of course, doesn’t know him.

For a moment it feels incredibly selfish to wake him.

The teenager flinches back and looks around with jerky head movements. He spots Urahara and his jaw sets into a harsh scowl.

“Hey, hat-n-clogs. How long’s this test supposed to take?” He pushes his own self out of the pod, stumbling a little. Izuku catches him. “Just tell me I’ve got my Shinigami powers back, already, so we can go save Rukia.”

“So, funny story.” Kisuke starts, right as Izuku runs a hand through his spiky brown hair.

“Alright, here’s where it gets weird.”

They pause and look at each other. Izuku huffs.

“This is all Kisuke’s fault.” He sighs, neatly side stepping to leave the man to his fate. Kisuke recovers swiftly, very much having learned to touch his Reiatsu on the Shihoin lands, and it left him graceful if nothing else.

Ichigo’s eyes zero in on him with laser precision. For a split second he’s a fifteen-year-old with little idea what’s going on, vulnerable and unsure, but within moments he’s shrugged that off angrily.

“What did you do?” He squints in Kisuke’s direction. His eyes widen. “Oh, fuck me. I shouldn’t have agreed to any tests. Do I still have my organs? Where am I? _How many days until the execution?_ ”

Kisuke puts a steadying hand on his shoulder.

As suspicious as he is, he still takes a breath under the support.

“What’s going on, hat-n-clogs?”

A silence echoes through the room.

There must be a clock somewhere, because Izuku can hear it ticking.

Kisuke looked on in silence.

“Kuchiki Rukia’s execution was cancelled in the calendar year 2002.”

It was the first of a series of words like blows.

Izuku turned away pretty quickly.

Watching Kisuke quietly explain his actions to an increasingly shaken Ichigo became too painful to bear a few seconds in. Well, really—

Izuku could bear that and more for his family, but having the kid right there? Right there, devastated, alone and not being able to comfort him?

That was beyond him. Every time Ichigo frowned at some new piece of information, Izuku wanted to wrap him tight in a hug and prove he wasn’t alone.

But he couldn’t.

So he quietly walked away from the two, following a suspicious string of lights that lit up in front of him. The lights—Tessai, he presumed—led him to an even deeper sublevel.

“You said, ‘just the kids’ earlier.” He points out, lifting his voice to the ceiling.

“I did.” Tessai confirms, echoing around from some speaker or another. There’s no door, but suddenly part of the wall opens up. It was so seamlessly hidden that he would have never found it alone.

“So who else is it?” He couldn’t handle any more shocks today, probably.

He already knew he would.

“I think it might be best to see for yourself.”

Izuku kept his mind carefully blank, leaning into the warm-sea-breeze in the back of his mind. If he focused on a half-jinzen, the stability of his connection with Nejibana, his thoughts were wordless, formless, calm.

He didn’t want to hope it was someone specific, only for that hope to be destroyed; didn’t want to feel guilt for hoping for one person over another.

“Just the one, right?” He asked, already knowing.

“Just the one.” Tessai confirmed.

In the center of the room a dias raised, lifting up a now-familiar pod.

Three Shinigami, an AI, and one Vizard-Shinigami-Quincy hybrid, who barely knew anything about his power, against the whole world.

Izuku put his fingers against the glass.

“Can I even wake them?” He wondered. If he had to sit here trying not to wonder who it was, he might really go insane.

“No, you need me for that.” Kisuke’s quiet voice murmured from behind him. Izuku half-turned.

“That was quick.” He said in surprise.

“Ha.” Kisuke ran a hand through his driftwood hair, looking like a teenager for one swift second. “I gave him the cliffnotes version. He needs time for this to settle in before he asks any more questions.”

“You think that’ll go well?” Izuku couldn’t help but imagine the frustration.

“I think it’ll take a long time to settle in him. We’ll have to be there for him as it does. And after.” He drew a shaky hand over the frosted glass, obscured with condensation.

“Is it anyone I know?” Izuku finally asked, unable to bear it any longer. The ocean in his mind grew tumultuous, restless. He still didn’t think any names.

“Oh, yes.” Kisuke looked up in surprise. “I just…”

He took a deep breath.

“I promised her.” His voice broke a little. “I…”

He presses a button sharply and the pod hisses open.

At first, he’s so sure it’s Yoruichi. For just a split second. It makes sense—it’s _Kisuke_ , and his devotion to her was second to none.

That doesn't jive with his explanation, though, and two seconds later his eyes take in familiar features. Cheekbones, a few angles off; the jaw, a different shape; skin tone, a few shades darker.

Shihōin Yūshirō.

For all his talk, he wasn’t _that_ much older than Kisuke’s group. He’d forced himself to grow up faster, be more, be better in order to take care of his siblings, but Kukaku was barely more than a century younger than him; Yoruichi was closer to his own age than Kukaku’s.

And Yūshirō had been his first crush.

It doesn’t quite hurt the way thinking about his wife hurts, the pain even now making his thoughts skip around her name. It’s a relief. The memory isn't painful at all. It was so long ago that it’s painted in golden hued tones of nostalgia; running through the Shihōin estates with those two, a little Kukaku behind them, before everything had gone to shit.

To his embarrassment, a little pink climbs into his cheeks to see Yūshirō there, laid out and relaxed in his sleep. His lips are still full and pink, lashes obscenely dark. He’s so _pretty_ and Izuku huffs, a little.

He got over that crush well before he rushed himself through the Academy in record time, becoming a Shinigami in full to support his family. He’d been the soul equivalent of a young adult at the time, but powerful, determined, and not afraid to stomp on a few traditions on his way.

The memories have him looking up.

He squints at Kisuke.

“You’re not the same Kisuke who fought the Prince of Heaven.” He accuses, not sure why it took this long to catch on. He’s utterly certain once it clicks in his head.

“I’m not. What gave me away?” Kisuke sounds merely curious.

“You’re too young.” He squints. “You look exactly like you did when you made captain, and that was…” His head hurt, trying to do all this math.

“I’m not that same body, no.” Kisuke agreed easily. “Everything was vaporized. I had a single panic button, something that would return me to the Shouten, but Yoruichi—”

His voice cuts off.

“She made you chose him.” He can imagine it all too clearly. He was an older brother himself. He could never imagine doing anything else in her shoes.

“I sent along a modified hell butterfly.” Kisuke huffs, laughing at himself a bit. “A last-ditch combination of memories and kido. I had backed up my memories the last time I was in the world of the living, but so much had happened since then.”

“So you’re like me.” Izuku smiled to himself. “A version of yourself struggling to assimilate a sudden influx of memories. Things are mostly linear but there are…”

“Holes.” Kisuke agreed. “It’s… more annoying than I thought it’d be.”

Between them, Yūshirō stirs, the slightest wrinkle in his brow. They both pause to watch him, wary, and a dozen other things beside.

The enormity of this situation sits heavy on them.

“So what do you want to do now?”

It’s an unexpected question. Technically, Kisuke outranked Shiba Kaien; yet technically, there were no ranks anymore. And Kisuke had always looked up to him.

Moreover, he was the instigator here. This was his world, his show, his time. He wasn’t calling the shots _exactly_ , but he knew already that they’d follow his lead.

“Well.” Izuku ran a hand through hair just a tad shorter than he liked. He’d have to put his body back on before anything else. “Do you have any Gigai prepared?”

He didn’t want to explain any of this to his _mom_.

But he would, he supposed, need to explain some of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clarify: Tessai is an AI, Kisuke is a clone with more-or-less all his memories, Ichigo is a clone made right after his successful hollowfication to regain his shinigami powers, in the uhhh shattered shaft was it called? And Yushiro is his own body, with all of his memories intact. 
> 
> I'm not taking an concrit, pretty much ever, but I'd love to hear what you liked! Especially since this has been so frustrating to wrangle. Timelines, man. I hope to get to the UA stuff soon, but right now it's looking like there's going to be a training arc before the entrance exam where Ichigo learns "So You Want to Be A Soul Reaper?" from two of the best, and also, Kisuke. This is in such a constant state of flux that who knows, your suggestions might get included somehow. I have a pretty good idea of a lot of this fic, but the details are ever changing. Sometimes the characters can surprise you when you're writing!


	10. as if there was anything like blood in me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for this chapter and the last one come from this tumblr user's really nice poetry
> 
> https://mouseymightymarvellous.tumblr.com/tagged/plz+ignore+me+and+my+aspirations+of+art
> 
> it gives me big izuku vibes and big kaien reincarnated vibes and some of the lines make good titles for chapters I haven't even written yet, which inspires me to write them

They decided to keep Ichigo busy.

Yūshirō and Ichigo rented out the apartment next door to the Midoriyas. Kisuke was looking into buying a storefront in Musutafu proper. Izuku was only thankful he hadn’t decided to move his current shop; his life was like an anime enough as it was.

They were all trying to keep busy, but each of them had more or less gone to bed in a fight and woken up with all their loved ones dead. They needed so much therapy.

Yūshirō spent much of his time as a cat. He threw himself into exploring the city, exploring the new world, and refusing to confront any of his ghosts.

He split his time between Izuku’s shoulders—“Kaien! You’re so cute and small again!”—and dogging Kisuke’s steps. He seemed more entertained than perturbed that Ichigo didn’t remember him, since apparently they hadn’t interacted much at the Soul King’s Palace.

Ichigo threw himself into decorating his apartment.

Their introduction had been short, but poignant.

“So, you’re my cousin?” The orange-haired teen barged in with no courtesy. It was so familiar it hurt.

Izuku grinned. “Kaien Shiba, yeah. Your dad was my uncle.”

The ‘was’ made them both wince.

Ichigo had huffed. “Just like dad to never tell me _anything_.” He sized Izuku up, more difficult now that Izuku was 14 and green-haired.

“You any good in a fight?” Ichigo asked bluntly.

Izuku allowed himself a wide grin. “I was a lieutenant.”

“I barely know what that means.” The teen complained. Izuku considered what he’d heard about Rukia’s situation, the quick version he’d been told about her extraction from the world of the living.

“You met Byakuya, right?” Byakuya who he remembered as a _kid_ , even younger than Kisuke, and the need to throttle him was not much assuaged by the knowledge that Ichigo, supposedly, already did.

“ _Yeah_.” Ichigo’s face said what he thought about _that_ encounter. “And the red-head—Renji or whatever. Didn’t get to talk much. They kicked my ass.”

“Byakuya was a captain. Renji was a lieutenant. I’m stronger than Renji.”

Ichigo raised a brow.

Izuku sighed.

“Rukia taught you, right?” He spread his arms wide. “Well, I taught Rukia. That brat was _my_ protégé.”

Ichigo didn’t look very impressed. He cocked his head. What was it with this kid?

Finally, he laughed, a short thing.

“Alright. You’re my cousin and you knew Rukia. I guess I can… live with this.”

Izuku winced, and put a hand on his cousin’s shoulder.

“You’re not alone. It might seem like it, it might hurt like fuck, but we’re all here together.” His face did something complicated. “We’ll make the best of this. Have you given any thought to how you want to finish high school?”

Ichigo’s scowl reappeared.

“It’s obvious, innit? I’m going to follow you, to UA or whatever.”

“Aha.” Izuku scratched his nose, grimacing at that can of worms. It was for the best but it was also going to be a _complete_ disaster. “And have you decided what you want your quirk to be?”

“Well.” Ichigo looked at the wall. “Do I really need one? It worked out fine last time.”

“Oh, kid.” Yūshirō’s voice was startling feminine in cat form. He hopped onto Ichigo’s shoulders and ran his tail over the kid’s nose. “Let’s make it something simple.”

“Kisuke told me that a week from now, in your personal timeline, my sister taught you flash step. From all reports, you became one of the fastest and most dangerous fighters in play.” His kitty grin was pointy, white, a touch unnatural. “Let me show you the ropes. If you get good enough, _that_ can be your quirk.”

“What, speed?”

Izuku took a step that, even in this body, took him across the room. Flash step was one of the cooler Shinigami disciplines. It didn’t matter how old you got; seeing someone’s outline blur just a tad as they reappeared somewhere else? Never got old.

Ichigo’s eyes had widened.

“You saw this before, right? With other Shinigami you’ve met.” Yūshirō lounged on his shoulders. The redhead nodded.

“Then let’s get started.”

Izuku huffed a laugh. They turned to him. Well, Ichigo turned and the fluffy black cat draped over him went along for the ride.

“Sorry, it’s just—I know the perfect place.”

-

Izuku had decided that he was never going to get anywhere with his gigai _fighting_ him all the time. It was a struggle to use Reiatsu; a struggle to flash step; a struggle to lift his sword, and she was a _part of him_.

Ichigo would have the same problems, they figured, so Yūshirō had decided with glee in his heart that they should _both_ do the lessons.

“I am _older than you_.” Izuku hissed, unamused—well. Fairly amused, actually, despite himself. Yūshirō licked one delicate paw.

“I’m the head of the Shihōin.” He countered, and not being able to raise an eyebrow didn’t stop the _vibe_.

Which. Fair.

Izuku sighed.

“I had already decided to build up muscle tone.” He admitted, going with it. “It seems like that’s my issue. The Reiatsu—all the power—is _there_ , but this body can’t channel it properly without damaging itself.”

His little furred head turned to Ichigo, sitting awkwardly amongst the trash piles. They were all very careful of jagged metal bits in the sand; nobody needed tetanus. They’d probably have to go to Kisuke if Izuku’s kaido didn’t work, and Tessai probably wouldn’t let being an AI stop him from coming up with an atrocious ‘home remedy’.

In fact, possessing the building itself made _escape_ from such a scenario much less likely. And more resembling a genuine horror movie. Izuku shuddered a bit.

“Let’s show him the basics and then you can move on to some tailored instruction.” He suggests.

“And what will you be doing?”

Izuku grimaces. “Leg day.”

They both snort at him.

“Alright…” Izuku starts, standing up and dusting off his pants. “Here’s how I was taught.”

The cat watched his lecture avidly.

“The thing to remember, of course, is that you’re in a human body right now and things… tear. Easily. Actually, maybe this is for the best. They say you have an abundance of Reiatsu but not the control to go with it. This way, your body will act as a buffer. I doubt you’ll be able to step very far, or very fast, at all in the beginning.”

So Izuku said, so it happened.

The first few times, Ichigo didn’t move at all.

Then he tripped.

Then, he fell over. A few times.

Then, he hit a washing machine face first.

The washing machine was a few yards away.

“Yay!” Izuku and Yūshirō cheered, perhaps a touch too enthusiastically. Ichigo cussed them both until he was blue in the face.

Then Ichigo got back up and tried again.

-

Izuku was very _limited_ by his human form. It was disgusting. While his cousin worked on slowly channeling a bit of his massive Reiatsu into his legs, Izuku worked on stretching and strength exercises to strengthen those same muscles, in order to channel more Reiatsu than he currently could.

He decided to kill two birds with one stone, more or less, in doing something productive while he did. There were only so many squats you can do before your eyes start glazing over.

“You never could leave a problem unsolved.” Yūshirō noted, amused. Izuku shot the cat a half-smirk.

“The beach doesn’t deserve all this clutter,” He maintained stalwartly. “And the ocean doesn’t need the _trash_.”

“It is rather hard to fish with all the debris in the way.” The cat acknowledged.

“How’s his progress?” It had been roughly three hours since they started. The kid was sweating, yet seemed to have barely put a dent in his reserves. Izuku fought the urge to whistle.

“Ready for the next step, I think.” He licked his paw, casual. “And as amusing as it might be to dance circles around him in this form…”

“I hear you.” Izuku dropped the heavy piece of metal he was carrying, some kind of car part. His memories of the living world were either incredibly _modern_ or centuries outdated. He would need to bridge that gap, at some point.

“Consider it a form of brotherly bonding.”

“I already said I’d do it, Yu-chan.”

Cats couldn’t blush, but Izuku got the rather satisfying sense the other was _affected_. He grinned as Yūshirō belatedly cleared his throat.

“Hey, Ichigo!” He lifted his voice.

“ _What?_ ” Ichigo did not sound amused, nor happy to be interrupted. As frustrated as he was at his task, and slow progress, he was equally absorbed into the attempt. Yūshirō was right; time for a break.

He hummed.

“How about we play a game?” He stretched out his calves, feeling the very human burn from his exertions. “Winner gets to choose what we eat for dinner.”

“I don’t really care what—no, you know what? Sure. I’m not making any progress over here, clearly.” He huffed and straightened, shaking out his arms as though they’d been doing the work.

“Don’t tense up so much.” He found himself offering, which made the kid scowl—and then scowl thoughtfully.

“Don’t force it, you mean?” Ichigo was not dumb by any value of the word.

“Yeah, exactly.” Izuku reached for his own Reiatsu and it came, promptly, despite how sluggishly it then trickled through his legs. He stepped to Ichigo’s other side, reaching out to tap him on the shoulder; to his credit, the kid was already turning.

“Nice instincts.” Izuku praised, lowering his hand immediately. He leapt to face him once more, fingertips brushing Ichigo’s chest.

“Hey!” The redhead’s hands twitched like he wanted a swordhilt in them.

“That’s two for me.”

Ichigo cursed, stumbling forward just faster than a human could.

“You were always stronger and faster than most, huh?” Izuku could make conversation as he dodged, occasionally lunging forward to get another point. It only left him a little winded, because his living body saw this as far more _work_ than his spiritual one; Ichigo was getting far more out of breath, and pissed off besides.

“Me and—goddamnit—my buddy Chad,” He growled as Izuku nimbly ducked under a jab. “We were always getting taken on by these fuckin’— _one_ , ha—gangs, street thugs, and beating them by the dozens. They just kept coming back for more.”

“Huh. Three.” He flash stepped five feet back to escape retaliation. “Did your friend have active spiritual energy?”

“Yeah, we all did.”

“So you’ve been stronger and faster than normal humans all your life.” Izuku most certainly _hadn’t_ been.

“I guess, yeah. And I could see ghosts for as long as I could remember. Two.”

“You’re already used to channeling Reiatsu in that body, then, you’re just not aware of it.” He challenged.

“Huh. I _guess_. Orihime wasn’t faster or stronger than us.”

“Really? Did she keep up with you in the wars, when everyone was no doubt moving too quickly for some officers to perceive, let alone baseline humans?”

Ichigo blinked hard, taking another hit.

“Never thought about it like that. Huh.”

“ _Five_.” Izuku caught him, a glancing blow. “You’re already moving faster, easier. I think you learn by doing, and do best when you’re not trying so hard.”

“Ha. You wouldn’t be the—three—first to notice. I guess I overthink things.” He grinned, almost ruefully. “Rukia would say ‘hardly’ and then make some joke that I never think, at all.”

Unexpectedly, Izuku laughed.

It reached up and tugged on him from behind the ribs.

“I can imagine.” He admitted.

How strange that he had, obviously, known her for so long, and that she had, equally as obvious, had a profound effect on the young man before him, both of them so touched by her life, yet having never met each other, spread out as they were at the beginning and end of her career.

The thought—that ending—hurt more each time he considered it. Ichigo too frowned a moment later, hit once more by the same burden; everyone they knew, abruptly and nonsensically gone.

Izuku picked up the pace; his legs burned at the challenge yet didn’t feel like a proper injury. He counted that as a win, as he got several more touches in, and his cousin slowly sped up to match him.

“I get the feeling this would be much easier in my Shinigami body.” Ichigo huffed, when they were winding down.

Izuku inclined his head, agreeing.

“Bodies are meat and meat is weight.” He shrugged. “Your soul is weighed down by all the flesh and the complexities therein; muscle and sinew and living tissue.”

“That makes no sense.” Ichigo complained. “We can still get hurt in soul-form.”

“So?”

“If we bleed, we must have veins and organs and all that stuff, same as when we’re alive.”

“You’d think so, huh?”

“Arrghh!” Ichigo threw himself into a relatively clear patch of sand, one Izuku had cleared earlier. “You sound like the old man.”

“Kisuke?” How odd, to consider Kisuke _old_. Amusement lifted the corners of his mouth.

He began a series of cool down exercises, determined to not be too sore to continue improving tomorrow.

“Yeah. Real cryptic for no reason.”

Yūshirō laughed from his perch nearby, before hopping down to join them.

“He’s always been like that.” The cat shifter assured, almost wistful.

“What’s he up to right now, anyway?” Izuku asked him, curious but almost afraid to ask.

Yūshirō wound between his legs, as he finished his kata.

“Oh, this and that. You know that he was able to rent Ichigo’s—and my-- apartment?”

They nodded.

“He had his fingers in many pies in the living world, bank accounts here accruing interest, foreign accounts sitting untouched—to say nothing of the hidden funds and assets, nor the investments he made back then, that Tessai has been nurturing shrewdly ever since.”

“Wow. So he really has been just… loose on the internet.”

If a cat could look smug, this one does.

“Yes, the ‘internet’. How interesting that the living keep their money represented by lines of editable numbers.”

“If he’s got so much of it, maybe Midoriya Izuku will get a part time job working at the new shop down the street.” Izuku huffed.

“Won’t that interfere with your free time?” Yūshirō asked.

“Well, it’s almost summer. Then I have less than a year to prepare for U.A.’s entrance exams.” He offered a hand to Ichigo, helping him stand up.

“Think I should go hero or general ed?” He asked, once he was settled.

The question struck Izuku like a bell.

“I… think I’m biased.” He admitted, slow seconds later. “I can’t imagine not being a hero.”

“Ha.” Ichigo snorted. “I see what you mean. I never _tried_ to be, but I always ended up—”

The two of them tensed up harshly as their mobiles went off near simultaneously, a disconcertingly cheerful tone heralding the appearance of a hollow.

“Well, Ichigo, are you quite ready to get back in the saddle?”

“I could ask you the same thing, old man.”

Izuku spluttered immediately, quickly gathering his things.

“Old man!?”

“Well, you’re older than hat-n-clogs.” The teen shrugged, ruthless. “Seems only right, ojisan.”

“ _Ojisan!?_ ”

He clutched his heart, utterly betrayed, while Yūshirō laughed merrily at their feet, the traitor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure I liked how this chapter starts and ends and fits into the story; but I like it enough to post, so that's something. Enjoy!
> 
> Kaido= healing kido. Most shinigami use #1 for all injuries, since it's the generic healing spell. Kaien knows all of them


End file.
